Donald Trump listened skeptically as his labor consultant bragged in early 1981 about connections to New York’s underworld.

Daniel Sullivan, who dealt with labor problems at Trump’s construction sites, was a 42-year-old giant of a man with great charm and a criminal record. He told Trump he was tight not only with leaders of unions, some of them fronts for the mob, but also with the FBI.

Trump was dubious.

“He was . . . a big storyteller,” Trump recently told The Washington Post. “He portrayed himself to be the closest person on earth to the FBI.”

Hate crimes rose 17% in 2017, the FBI said Tues­day, a jump that was partly dri­ven by a spike in anti-Sem­itic in­ci­dents.

The num­ber of hate-crime in­ci­dents tar­get­ing Jews in­creased 37%, to 938 in 2017. Anti-Mus­lim crimes fell by 11% in 2017, to 273. Race or eth­nic-based hate crimes jumped by 18% in 2017 to 4,131. Hate crimes tar­get­ing black peo­ple in­creased by 16% and were the most for any cat­e­gory of race, eth­nic group, re­li­gion or sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion.

The facts of the case, the choice of targets, details about the suspect's van and social media, and continued delivery of parcels after his arrest all indicate that law enforcement has erred in finding the parties truly responsible for the delivery of the mail bombs. The FBI's history of incompetence and unethical behavior provides further incentive to contest the official story being fed to Americans and the world. Hollywood and media involvement in perpetuating public bias against the accused has similarly contributed to this unfortunate situation.